My Ex Is Not Responding Should I Move On?

Question: Yangki, what I hear you saying is, to have a relationship, you must communicate. What if the other person is not communicating, how can there be a relationship?

Yangki’s Answer: You got it down. A relationship can not survive without communication. Communication is that direct line from ‘me’ to ‘you’. You cut that line, you cut what feeds and nourishes the relationship. The longer it stays cut, the higher the chances of the relationship dying. Resurrecting a dead relationship is harder than many people realize.

If the other person is not communicating, you try to keep the lines of communication open as best as you can. You try to keep the relationship alive.

Immediately after a nasty break-up or if you acted overly needy and aggressive, sending your text numerous texts, calling them insistently, begging and pleading, telling them you love them and all the acting up that follows rejection, your ex may not want to communicate because you are not in an emotionally good place.

Most emotionally healthy people calm down and are able to communicate without the drama within a few days, a week or so. It may take much longer for younger adults especially those experiencing a break-up with their first ‘true love’ for the first. It also takes longer for older people who have not yet developed the necessary skills to deal with intense emotional overload and/or emotionally trying situations.

But if you’ve been around the block a few times, got your heart broken a few times and have the skills to deal with emotionally upsetting situations, by day four or so, you will be “rational” again.

Try reaching out, no ‘relationship talk’, just reconnecting with another human being. Try this at least three times at intervals. If your ex is still not responding after three attempts, give it a week or two at max, and try again.

Try this three times, and if they are still not responding it may be that they do not want to communicate or have moved on. There is no more relationship. Time to move on.

If you are still not ready to ‘give up” (we all get there in our own time, no need to feel pressured to ‘move on’), send a text once in a while, acknowledge a birthday/important event, share some important news you think they may want to hear etc. Keep the lines of communication open until you feel ready to ‘move on’ organically.

It’s much easier to ‘move on’ when it’s a natural process than forcing yourself to do what you are not ready to do. Like ‘natural medicine’, moving on organically is also healthier.

Here is the thing. Emotions are energy (energy-motion); energy does not “die”, and when not processed in a healthy way, that energy takes another form. That’s why many individuals (and whole cultures), that suppress and distract themselves from processing their emotions struggle with a whole host of mood disorders, addictions and unhealthy expression/outlets for their emotions. They also take longer to bounce back from devastating emotional experiences.

At the time, forcing yourself to move on seems right, and I know many “experts” advice and encourage it, but when you ‘force” yourself to ‘move on’, you undermine the process of natural healing and miss out on the insights and understanding that come with the process. You are bound to repeat the experience, may be not in the exact form, but in some other way, until you learn to ‘be still’ and let nature do what nature does best.